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7 February 2022

Tamar Valley Community Food project on the lookout for volunteers

The Tamar Valley is getting a new community fridge as part of a project that collects surplus food and gives it away for free and is on the look-out for volunteers passionate about the environment to help run it.
Tamar Valley Food project

Local housing association LiveWest have been piloting a food waste project in the Tamar Valley for the past month and have been doing community outreach work arriving each Wednesday morning at car parks across Callington, Harrowbarrow, St Ann’s Chapel, Gunnislake and Calstock with free food donations with the aim to reduce food waste and stop it unnecessarily going to landfill.

Mai Evans, Community Connector at LiveWest said: “The people of the Tamar Valley have been amazing and supportive to our food waste project so far, either by volunteering, donating or by using the project. However, we are in need of volunteers to run the mobile community larder from April onwards. 

Once we have the permanent fridge which will be open-access 7-days a week and will hopefully be launched in April, then we’ll need more volunteers to collect donated food for it and also to monitor and clean it. Just as important is our need for more sources of surplus food so please bring us those tins or packets long lurking in the back of your cupboard and homegrown fruit and vegetables.”

With nearly 200 people a week benefitting from the food waste project currently, there is the need for more volunteers to help co-ordinate donations. This will be continuing the work with the Cornwall Gleaning Network as well as The Community Larder Network co-ordinated by Treverbyn Community Trust.

Those interested in getting involved in the project can contact Mai Evans Community Connector at LiveWest on mai.evans@livewest.co.uk or tamarvalleycf@gmail.com 

Mai added: “We generally receive a wide range of items, our donations are varied but the hope is that people will take advantage of the free food and find new ways of using ingredients and experimenting with different vegetables. We are not a food bank but we are working closely with Callington Food Bank. Our aim is to reduce unnecessary food waste.”